Ashes to Ashes
by TheRogueParadox
Summary: [Oneshot] When Ed finds his old childhood forest burning, it rips him apart in more ways than he cares to admit. Sometimes losing the past hurts, even if you've long since moved on. (Post-Brotherhood)


Okay, before you all say anything, yes, I know, it's been forever, and when I finally come back, it's just to post a oneshot. To be honest, I've been really focusing on my original writing and publishing for the past few years, and I had kind of just given up on fanfiction for the most part. But... Well, I'm near the Columbia Gorge fire in Oregon, and it's really been hitting me hard. So today I just started writing in the easiest way I knew how to deal with it. And that way is fanfiction. This is pretty raw, and pretty much the only edits I've done is making sure the only red squiggles are from "automail" and "Resembool." So don't expect miracles. But it helped me deal with things.

I'm hoping this is sort of a new change for my writing. My writing has been having a bit of a funk lately, and the other day I realized that I can't remember the last time I just wrote something for myself and not for the world. And I think I really need to take some time to try writing for myself without thinking about much outside of that. There's a lot in my life that needs healing, and the way I used to do that was with writing.

Will that mean more fanfiction? *shruuuugs*? I really don't know. I'm just going to kind of follow the flow and see what happens. If that means a fanficition renaissance, okay, if it doesn't... Well, I'm sorry. If you really want to read my stuff, I suppose you can always read my published stuff. :P I hope you can at least enjoy this small offering in the meantime.

* * *

Sometimes you need to burn the world, and sometimes all you can do is stand still and watch as the world burns around you. Today is a day for watching, Ed thought as he looked up at the sky, ashes stinging his eyes even as tears leaked out of them.

He wasn't sure why exactly it was getting to him in the first place. He had seen countless people die. Hell, he had taken some of those lives himself. And yet here he was, crying over a forest fire as the sky rained ash. Trees weren't people. He hadn't cried when the childhood tree in his backyard had burned with the rest of his house. He hadn't cried when countless trees had been destroyed in the forest from a homunculi rampage. And yet, here he was crying over these trees.

But something about this fire felt so… unnatural. Ed had never been this close to a fire this big before. He had never seen the sun get choked out by a layer of ash so thick that it coated the ground like snow. He could feel the ash on his arms, in his hair, coating his tongue. Everything in his body was telling him to run, to get away, but he still found himself rooted to the spot, staring at the sky. Al would kill him when he went back in the house, but just a minute more wouldn't hurt. The forest deserved at least that much respect.

Ed held out his right hand and watched the ashes gently settle on it. They were as graceful as tiny white flower petals. Though that was probably appropriate, he thought with a bitter chuckle as he closed a fist over the ashes. Those ashes had been a tree just yesterday, after all. He was holding all that was left of a tree. He didn't even know what kind of tree it had been, or how old it was. Just that yesterday it had been one part of a whole, and now it was gone.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Ed thought, clenching his fist even tighter. He had never considered the implications of that phrase being completely literal. It was just something cynical to say when people were grieving. Or at least, he had found it cynical when other people seemed to take some sort of strange comfort from it.

Eventually, someday, he would die, and be buried in the ground to rot. And someday, that dirt would be the nutrients to feed a tree. And then someday, some long, long day away, that tree would burn and become the ash to feed a new tree. Because fires usually eventually touched all the forests, no matter how much humans tried to protect them. Hell, sometimes they burned because of the humans, like the fire happening today.

Somehow, things always ended and began from ashes and dust.

It was then that Ed heaved a dry cough, and he knew it was time to surrender and get out of the thick air. He could mourn the forest again when the fire wasn't trying to destroy everything, even the air and humans breathing it.

* * *

He and Al didn't get a chance to see the forest again for months. The fire kept going for months, leaving the people of Resembool struggling to breathe, or go outside, or do much of anything other than watching and waiting for nature to tire itself out, hoping it wouldn't tread any closer than it already had. Everyone in Resembool had moved over to the nearest town (which wasn't very near at all), since the flames had gotten too close to be safe. Even that far away, they had all still choked on smoke and ash as they waited, hoping they would actually have homes to return to when it was all over.

When Ed finally got a chance to see the forest, it was so much more than he had been expecting. He had pictured the forest being completely gone, just leaving a gaping black spot as if it had been swallowed up by a giant monster.

Instead, the forest was still there in a faint ghostly imitation of itself. All the grass was gone, leaving dirt and rocks in all directions. The trees were still standing, but with a black mark running from the base of the trunk to far above Ed's head. It looked like the sort of dark plague he had pictured when he had read fantasy books as a child. It looked like sickness. It looked like death. Ed felt like he was walking on a battlefield littered with corpses, all these dead trees caught in their last moments before death.

"It doesn't look at all the same as when we were kids," Al breathed, looking around with his eyebrows scrunched. A few other people from the town picked their way through the trees, pointing and murmuring. The plan was to find a way to replant some of what had been lost, but everyone seemed too caught up in the reality of the fire to think much about the future.

"Of course it doesn't, Al," Ed said as he kicked a rock. It skidded through the dirt with a small cloud before it finally bumped against a pile of branches. "It all got burned."

It had been years since Ed had been a bitter teenager running around the country at the whims of the military, but he found himself slipping into old habits. Being bitter and sarcastic was just easier. It was easier not to cry if he was angry instead. It was how he dealt with tragedy then, and that meant it was about the only way he knew how to deal with tragedy.

Al shot his brother a look, and Ed paused. He wasn't sure whether he was being pitied or getting scolded. Or both. Whatever it was, he didn't like it. He huffed and hurried ahead of Al so no one could see his face.

Apparently, his old walking habits had flared up again as well, and he ended up walking much faster than he intended. After a minute he had left Al a fair amount behind. Ed looked over his shoulder when he realized he couldn't hear footsteps any more. Al was resting a palm against one of the blackened trunks, looking up at the spindly branches stretching into the sky. Ed knew that expression. Al was trying to apologize to the tree.

"Like that'll do any good," Ed muttered as he turned away and started walking again. "That tree's long gone."

He was so focused on walking quickly and getting away that he didn't pay enough attention to his feet as he walked over the cluttered forest ground. His automail foot ended up hooking under a root, and Ed ended up flat on his face on the forest floor in the next minute.

"Agh! Stupid foot!" he said as he shook it away from the root poking up from the ground. "I would have caught myself if I could just feel-" He cut off mid sentence as he let out a strangled noise and brought the automail close to his body, pressing his forehead against his knee. Dammit, he had gone through so many things so much worse than this and never shed a tear, but now he was an emotional wreck for whatever reason. It was just a forest.

No, it was a home, Ed thought as he pulled away from his leg and looked around again. It was more of a home than a pile of bricks could ever have been. The house he had burned down had just been a possession, but this had been a living, beating heart that had always been nearby. This had been where he and Al spent most of their afternoons when they were young, running through the underbrush and splashing their feet in the stream.

Ed had burned down one home when he was young, and now the other home had gone up in smoke as well. Only this time, he'd had no control. It felt like his entire childhood had gone up in smoke. Like that part of his life had never even existed. There was nothing he had been able to do about it. And there was still nothing he could do.

He glanced around to check that Al was still far behind him. Ed didn't want Al to see the foolishness that he was about to do. But his brother seemed to still be far behind. Ed took a deep breath and clapped his hands together, then pressed them against the ground, screwing his eyes shut.

"Come on," he muttered under his breath. "Grow."

Like he had done a thousand times before then, he tried to reach for that familiar part of his brain, the part of him that had felt powerful and in control. He tried to visualize the circles, the equations, the plant, the trees, anything. But just like the other thousand times, that part of his brain stayed infuriatingly silent. He could try to do every logical formula and equation in the world, and a spark of magic still wouldn't come out of him.

"Grow!" he growled, tightening his hands into fists clenching at the dirt. A tear slid down his cheek and into the dirt.

"I don't think that will do any good, Ed," a soft voice said above him. Ed looked up and found Al looking down at him with a sad smile. "And even if it did, you were never very good at plant alchemy, anyway."

Ed let out a wet chuckle and shook his head. "Shut up."

"Hey, you know I can't lie," Al said with a chuckle of his own as he held out a hand to help Ed up. Ed took it and dragged himself to his feet, brushing the dry dirt off his pants.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to be a jackass about it."

The two fell silent and the looked around the forest again, their shoulders touching in silent comfort.

"It's kind of weird, isn't it?" Al said after a minute. "It feels like saying goodbye to an old friend."

"Yeah," Ed breathed out. The forest would eventually regrow, new trees would come and flourish in the rich soil the ash had made. But it would never be their forest again. It would be an entirely new forest. The forest they had known was gone.

"Hey," Ed suddenly said, and Al looked over at him. "Did you know that your body completely replaces all the cells in your body every seven years?"

Al raised his eyebrows and looked at Ed like he had said Winry was considering etiquette school, pulling an inch away so their shoulders weren't touching any more. "Yeah, but what does that have to do with-"

"It means," Ed said, cutting Al off and looking at the trees instead of his brother. "That neither of us is the same person who played in this forest. We both have completely new bodies. We kept replacing the parts of us that died until we were an entirely new person." He looked back to Al again. "Like the forest."

Al chuckled and shook his head a little. "You have a strange way of dealing with grief, Ed."

"Hey! I do no-"

"Come on," Al said, nodding his head in the direction they had come. "It's getting late. Let's go home and have dinner. We can come back tomorrow to replant."

Ed snorted and fell into step with Al. "Yeah, okay. You're just trying to avoid a fight you know I would win."

"If that helps you sleep at night."

A moment of silence passed between them before Al bit his lip and looked over at Ed. Ed pretended he was preoccupied with the trail, though he could feel Al looking at him. He didn't want Al worrying about him and asking all sorts of questions about feelings. Al would probably end up asking those questions eventually anyway, but Ed hoped he could at least delay them until after dinner. Al turned away and looked at the ground. He twisted his fingers together a couple times before he finally spoke again.

"Ed…" Ed looked over, but Al kept his eyes looking at the ground as they walked, picking at the worn cuticle on one of his fingers. He let out a breath. "Do you… Do you regret it? Giving it up?"

Ed licked his lips and swallowed a lump in his throat. His first instinct was to say no, of course not, never, but he knew that if he answered too quickly, Al would think he was lying. It was the same thing Ed would have thought all those years ago when he'd asked if Al hated him, after all. He took a minute to think on the question, really think so he could do the question justice. He knew that he was staying silent long enough that Al was probably worrying the answer was "yes," but Ed wanted to make sure he did the question justice.

"It's hard to explain," he said after a minute with a sigh. "It's sort of… everything at once, in a way?" Al was frowning at that, so Ed continued with a shrug.

"I mean, sure, I miss my alchemy all the time. But missing it doesn't mean I regret the decision. I regret all the things that led up to that decision, but I've never regretted that decision. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It's one of the best decisions I ever made."

Al was biting at his lip, so Ed stopped walking and grabbed Al by the shoulders, looking Al in the eye.

"Al," he said. "I don't hate you, okay? You're my brother. I'll love you forever. I'm afraid you're stuck with my obnoxious ass for the rest of your life."

Al let out a chuckle and looked at the ground, his eyes glinting with something Ed didn't understand.

"What," he said, narrowing his eyes. Al looked up again with a smirk.

"No, I'm not," he said. "I'm only stuck with it for the next seven years. Then you'll have a new ass."

Ed's eyes widened at one of the rare instances of Al swearing "Ohhh, no you didn't!" he growled, lunging to grab Al's collar, but Al dodged him with a laugh and ran on the path that led home. Ed chased him the entire way, shaking his fist and yelling insults.

There would be plenty more healing to tackle in the morning. After all, if Al was willing to swear, neither of them were quite over the loss yet. But facing that could wait until morning. For that moment, they could just take comfort in the fact that they still had each other, that they would always have each other, and that there was a home full of hot food and people they loved waiting for them at the end of the trail.


End file.
